Cam Attree Fine Art Photographer

Growing up with a father who was a very keen amateur photographer and sitting through countless slide shows of his work, I guess I developed an eye for it without even realising it. I was given my first manual film SLR, a hand-me-down Practica MTL5 from my dad, when I was in high school and I was hooked. We built a darkroom at home and I quickly learnt how to process and print my own black and white photos.

After high school I applied for and was accepted into a Diploma of Photography course at the Queensland College of Art. Over the next two years I received my grounding in all aspects of photography but after leaving, I was still unsure of what area of photography I wanted to pursue.

I got a job at the local camera store and my plan was to work and build up my equipment before breaking out into the world of professional photography but unfortunately that took me a lot longer to do than I predicted. My love at the time was for landscape and wildlife photography so I spent my weekends and holidays camping and exploring my local areas and building a decent portfolio. In 1998 I entered and won the Australian Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. So with the prize money, I booked a trip to every wildlife photographers dream location – Africa. A few years later I ticked off another one of the locations on my dream list and headed to Antarctica.

It wasn’t long before I realised that making money from landscape and wildlife photography was a pretty tough gig and unless I could afford to travel to all of these exotic locations in the first place, it was going to be hard turning that dream into reality.

By chance, I was contacted by a young model who was just starting out and needed to build her portfolio. She really loved my photography, even though I had very few people images in it, and asked if I would like to do a shoot with her. That was in 2002 and after a number of shoots with this young lady, so began my love affair with photographing women.

It was at art college that I had my first taste of artistic nude photography. Despite being a pimple faced naive 18 year old at art college who was full of nerves, I managed to create some beautiful black and white studio nudes of one of my fellow students. I’m still very proud of those images to this day and in some ways I regret that it took me another 13 years before I did my next artistic nude shoot and really started to explore the genre.

I spent the next few years working with models in my area and travelling models from other states in Australia but in 2008 I had the opportunity to work with an amazing model from the USA who was doing an Australian trip. Candace Nirvana was her name and she introduced me to the ARTnudes Network (www.figuremodels.org). An fantastic online community of like minded photographers and models who all pursue the craft of artistic nudes.

Since then I have met and worked with so many truly astounding photographers and models from all parts of the world who keep me inspired to explore, create and refine my craft. I love the challenge of working with new models and extracting the potential I see in them by creating images which they didn’t think they were capable of producing. At the same time, I love being inspired by a professional art nude model who can create poses that I just didn’t even think were possible.

Over the years I have worked with a variety of different cameras, in both film and digital. Everything from large format cameras using wet plate collodion, polaroid film, 35mm, medium format and large format black and white film to the latest digital cameras. All have their own look, feel and let me be creative by utilising their unique intricacies.

I also love to explore different lighting techniques, both in the studio using flash or constant light sources or outdoors. My favourite style of art nude images is combining the human form within the landscape, often referred to as Nudescapes.

I’ve had a number of exhibitions showcasing my work and even produced a limited edition, fine-art coffee table book of art nudes from a trip to Baja, Mexico in 2011 called Naked in Baja which is also available as an interactive eBook – http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/ 380060-naked-in-baja

I run a number of photographic workshops every year, including one focusing purely on artistic nude photography. Soon I hope to expand those workshops to include multi day, live-in workshops in amazing destinations with equally amazing models.

Awards and Achievements:

Associate Diploma of Arts in Applied Photography

1998 Australian Wildlife Photographer of the Year

2008 Qld AIPP Portrait Photographer of the Year

2012 Creative Asia Landscape Photographer of the Year

2013 RAW Australia Photographer of the Year

AIPP Accredited Photographer

AIPP Master Photographer II

*AIPP – Australian Institute of Professional

Photography Exhibitions:

The Viewer and the Viewed – Joint Exhibition, Qld Centre for Photography 2006